I Need to Identify the faulty component in my laptop

[handakes]

Hey there,
I had an old Dell Inspiron 15R N5110 which was decent enough for it's time but I dropped it and it suffered some major damage. put it over the shelf, didn't check back on it til recently.

the screen bezel is slightly cracked, and there is a permanent green line at the the far left of the screen, but other than that, no other damage on the outside. the performance however, is another story.
it didn't want to boot to being with, turns out that the HDD died, i changed it with another one that I had lying around, but it's general health is still a bit sketchy. installed windows, but now the thing hangs like crazy, takes up to 30 mins for me to be able to interact with it after it boots, I ran some diagnostics and here's what I've found and done so far:

-The event viewer showed multiple Disk errors, so i ran HDD scan and it shows Numerous bad sectors, i stopped it after it kept counting bad sectors for 2 hours at just 5% scan completion!

- ran memtest as well, gives multiple errors at both Socket 1 and 2

the thing is, this HDD is a different one, not the one that was installed when it fell. what are the chances of it ALSO being corrupted?

- I guess what I'm asking here is, is there a chance that something went bad in the MOBO or the PSU , and it now Fries Ram and HDDs ? I don't want to buy new ones Just to fry them as well, or to find out that the problem lies elsewhere.

sorry for the long read, But I really need some advice on this situation.

 

[Kevin_138]

FIRST Nothing works until you have seen it with your own eyes and tested it, even brand new out the box!

All you can do is take it apart , reseat everything and hope

If you have known working RAM and HDD, you can try swapping them out.

If you are lucky it's slow due to the bad blocks/sectors, and you just put a duff HDD in.

 

[topheron]

Your laptop motherboard has it's chips and cpu soldered onto the laptop motherboard. If your cpu is removeable then the socket for the cpu is soldered to the motherboard. With enough vibration (dropping the laptop), the chips can break their solder connections.

If your chipset has intermittant bad connections it will throw ram errors, cpu errors, hard drive errors, etc.

I wouldn't try to fix it, but if you did, you would need to pull the laptop apart, remove the cpu heat sink (part of your slowness may be that your heat sink isn't firmly attached to the CPU, or it's fan isn't turning), once the heat sink is removed, check to make sure that all connections are attached, look for bulged capacitors, and if the CPU is in socket then re-seat it.

Put fresh heat sink compound on the cpu and heat sink, re-assemble and cross your fingers.

If the problem is broken solder joints they can be re-flowed, but this is a LOT less likely to be worth doing... you likely won't fix it.

Personally, when I have a favorite laptop that I want to repair I check to see if some computer shop is selling a used motherboard/cpu. There are a lot of laptops that break screens and cases, sometimes you can get the part you need pretty cheaply.

Good luck!

 

[handakes]

Your laptop motherboard has it's chips and cpu soldered onto the laptop motherboard. If your cpu is removeable then the socket for the cpu is soldered to the motherboard. With enough vibration (dropping the laptop), the chips can break their solder connections.

If your chipset has intermittant bad connections it will throw ram errors, cpu errors, hard drive errors, etc.

I wouldn't try to fix it, but if you did, you would need to pull the laptop apart, remove the cpu heat sink (part of your slowness may be that your heat sink isn't firmly attached to the CPU, or it's fan isn't turning), once the heat sink is removed, check to make sure that all connections are attached, look for bulged capacitors, and if the CPU is in socket then re-seat it.

Put fresh heat sink compound on the cpu and heat sink, re-assemble and cross your fingers.

If the problem is broken solder joints they can be re-flowed, but this is a LOT less likely to be worth doing... you likely won't fix it.

Personally, when I have a favorite laptop that I want to repair I check to see if some computer shop is selling a used motherboard/cpu. There are a lot of laptops that break screens and cases, sometimes you can get the part you need pretty cheaply.

Good luck!

yeah, I get what you're saying. but just to make sure, i removed the HDD, hooked it up to my PC and it did have bad sectors. also, i had a friend with an identical laptop give me his, i ran memtest 86 with my ram on his laptop, and it did give multiple errors, just like my run.

Also, i just recently (before the it fell) opened it up, changed the heat sink compound for better thermals, and it shows in my memtest runs vs my friends Identical laptop, my thermals are better, understandably.

there's no denying that the HDD and RAM sticks are dead. what I'm asking is, can it happen to another new set. can the mobo be the one frying them? is that possible? i just don't throw money away like that.

and thanks for the input, guys.